Novara Media

Many people would agree that corporations have undue influence over our democracies. But exactly how this influence is exerted is tricky to work out – and that is by design. Behind innocuous-sounding acronyms and worthy-sounding trade agreements are the real cogs that allow the global corporate machine to corrupt societies. Our guest this week Matt […]

Israel needs friends. And one of the main tools it has used to get them is its arms industry. The 10th biggest in the world, it increasingly specialises in the kind of digital surveillance technology European governments love to pretend they never use. Such powerful technology has not only forced many of its former adversaries […]

Ian Hogarth has invested in more than 50 artificial intelligence companies and is co-author of the annual State of AI report. And he’s worried. Not only about the disruptive consequences of machine learning for human employment, but about the potential rise of an ‘AGI’: artificial general intelligence. For Hogarth, the prospect of a machine able […]

After last week’s look at the politics of comedy, this time the gang turn to the gogglebox for a Microdose about sitcoms. Specifically, we’re watching comedy shows set in the workplace – from shoddy B&Bs to big-box superstores, from Wernham Hogg to Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. What lies beyond the double entendres and cheap sexism […]

The French left is in its most explosive state for a generation. In response to the pension reforms pushed through by Emmanuel Macron’s government, the Yellow Vests, unions, students and environmentalists alike are linking up their struggles. The tactical vocabulary has expanded: strikes and official protests have been supplemented by blockades, ‘wild demonstrations’ and power […]

What’s the point of comedy? Stand-ups were at the forefront of the cultural backlash against Thatcherism, but today’s meme-driven lols are rarely in the service of left-wing politics. Meanwhile, the world’s most powerful people seem intent on having a laugh, from podcasting politicians to presidential comedians. In this Trip, Jeremy Gilbert, Nadia Idle and Keir […]

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the experiment of communist East Germany came to an end. Yet for a while it was a successful project, raising living standards against massive odds and providing stability for the first time in half a century. So is it time to reassess Europe’s most wealthy, and advanced […]

Despite the gains won by a century of feminism, the conveyor belt of normie life still pushes us towards the nuclear family and the picket fence. We can sense that our freedom is still limited by our material conditions – the prohibitive cost of housing, for instance – but is it also limited by our lack […]

Palestinians don’t often get to tell their own stories, and on the rare occasion they do it’s on highly limited terms. Ash Sarkar speaks to writer and poet Mohammed el-Kurd, Palestine correspondent for The Nation, about growing up in occupied territory and why journalists fail to tell the truth about Israel.

Since the 1950s, nuclear power has been met with a resounding “nein danke!” from many left-wing campaigners, even as it has become a fixture of the energy mix, powering 15% of the UK grid today – down from 25% in the 1990s. Supporters on the left say nuclear is a necessity if we stand a […]